John Jordan05 - Blood Sacrifice

by Michael Lister

  “I don’t understand. Why would someone take my tape? It proves I’m telling the truth.”

  “Maybe the devil did it,” Steve said.

  “That’s not funny,” Father said. “You shouldn’t tease about powerful things you don’t understand.”

  “Maybe it was taken precisely because it proves you’re telling the truth,” Reid said. “Maybe the murderer took it in an attempt to set you up.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Whatta you know about exorcisms?” Steve asked.

  We were standing next to the coffee maker again, taking a short break before we wrapped up the interview, allowing Father Thomas and Ralph Reid to have a little privileged conversation.

  “Not a lot. Studied it a little in seminary—even wrote a paper on it, but have forgotten most of it. Read a few books since then. Seen a documentary.”

  “Well, all I know is what I’ve seen in movies. And I’m not much of a reader. You think you could brush up a little on the subject and give me a Cliff’s Notes version?”

  I nodded.

  “Is what he’s saying even possible?”

  I shrugged. “I’m in the ‘anything’s possible’ business.”

  “You believe in angels and demons and all that shit?”

  “Used to. When I was a kid I believed in them in very literal and concrete ways. As I grew up and learned more, I saw them more as metaphors.”

  “Metaphor didn’t do what was done to my cousin.”

  “I know. And I do believe in a spiritual realm. It’s just far more mysterious and subtle than most religious people seem to think––and that’s especially true of its influence and impact on this realm. I try to remain open, but I’m pretty skeptical.”

  “Could it be mental illness?” he asked.

  I nodded. “And we’ve got to consider drug use as well. Depending on how many drugs she’s really done, and what kind, and if she was under the influence at the time… Toxicology should tell us a lot.”

  He nodded.

  We were silent a moment, sipping our coffee, looking around the dim, empty station. It was neat and orderly, obviously well run, and surprisingly modern and technologically sophisticated.

  “What about the tape?” he asked. “Why would someone take it?”

  “Could be what Reid said.”

  “Or Father Thomas could have taken it because what it really shows contradicts what he’s telling us.”

  “Either way,” I said, “you need to search St. Ann’s.”

  He nodded. “That should be fun.”

  We grew quiet again, each of us stretching and yawning. Steve looked as tired as I felt, the stubbly skin of his washed-out face drawn, dark circles under bloodshot eyes, and stiff, unruly hair in need of washing. I was sure I looked worse.

  “He was covered in her blood,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “His hands are bruised and swollen and I guarantee the blood and tissue removed from his nails are hers and vice versa, and he has nicks and scratches on his hands and face that look like she was fighting him off.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He probably did it,” he said. “Probably killed her and all the rest of this hocus pocus shit’s just clouding the issue.”

  “Probably,” I said, “but not necessarily, not definitely, not absolutely, not yet.”

  He frowned and nodded his begrudging agreement. “Come on. Let’s go see if we can turn probably into unequivocally.”

  Walking back down the narrow hall, I said, “Pretty good vocabulary not to be a reader.”

  He laughed. “My mom gave me Word Smart vocabulary-building tapes for Christmas last year. I keep them in my Explorer. Listen to them as I drive around. Tell anybody and I’ll shoot you.”

  “Since for the moment we don’t have the tape, why don’t you tell us exactly what happened inside that cabin and how you both wound up in the clearing.” Father Thomas nodded, his eyes looking up and off into the distance, his face wincing with the first images of memory.

  “I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said, “and I’ve never seen anything like it. She started out doing all the vile stuff you’d expect—stuff she would’ve seen in movies. She spit out obscenities at me, touched herself sexually, and—”

  “I thought she was strapped to the bed?” Steve said.

  “All but one hand,” he said. “She couldn’t do it. She asked me to, but I told her one hand was enough.”

  “So her hand was free to do sexual stuff to herself?”

  If talking about sexual matters embarrassed Father Thomas, he gave no indication. On the contrary, he seemed quite comfortable with the subject. He didn’t blush or grow tentative, nor did he become aggressive in an attempt to overcompensate. I was reminded how much I disliked people making assumptions about me in general or my sexuality in particular because I was a minister, and realized I had done the same thing to him—though in my defense he had taken a vow of celibacy.

  “And violence—to herself and to me,” he said. “I should have strapped her free hand down, but by the time I knew what was going on, I couldn’t.”

  “Whatta you mean you couldn’t?”

  “It was too strong. I tried, but with both my hands and all my weight I couldn’t hold it down.”

  As tired and frayed as the rest of us looked, Father Thomas looked worse—and it wasn’t just fatigue or the result of enduring an event as obviously traumatic as he had. It was how frail and feeble he was. Maybe what Sister Abigail had said about his condition was more than an attempt at making him seem innocent. Maybe he really was physically incapable of the brutality done to Tammy.

  “Which hand?”

  Father Thomas thought about it for a moment, looking up in the other direction this time.

  “Her left,” he said.

  “Father, Tammy was right-handed.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It wasn’t her strength I was dealing with anyway.”

  “No, if she really strapped herself to the bed like you said, wouldn’t she have used her right hand to do it?”

  He nodded. “I would think she would.”

  “Sure you don’t want to change your story now? Before it’s too late?”

  “I’m telling the truth, Steve. I’m sure the medical examiner can tell you which of her wrists was bound.”

  I wasn’t sure if Father Thomas was telling the truth—I was inclined to doubt it—but the longer we talked, the more thoroughly convinced I became that he was telling what he believed to be the truth.

  “I’m sure she’ll be telling us a lot of things,” Steve said.

  “And every one of them will confirm what I’m saying’s the truth,” Father said.

  “We’ll talk about that some more when I get the autopsy report back,” Steve said, “but for now I need you to explain to me why you carried her outside.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You carried her down the path to the clearing close to the Intracoastal Waterway. Don’t tell me you don’t remember. We found both of you in the clearing.”

  “I didn’t carry her. I followed her. She ran out of the cabin. I thought she was going to hurt herself so I ran after her.”

  “Was the exorcism over?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you unstrap her?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then why’d you let her do it?”

  “I didn’t let her do anything. Besides, she didn’t unstrap herself.”

  “Father,” Steve said in a weary, incredulous voice, “if you didn’t unstrap her and she didn’t unstrap herself, who—wait, let me guess.”

  “Be careful, Steve. Don’t play around and poke fun at evil. All I did was underestimate it, and look what’s happened. Take it too lightly and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

  Steve let out a heavy sigh. “How did Tammy get out of the straps?”

  “All throughout the rite, her body contorted into a variety of forms,” he said. “Things would a
ppear on her skin, her face would change into someone else’s, her skin would rip and tear, and this time, her body elongated. She became taller and thinner and just pulled her hand and feet through the straps.”

  Suddenly, Steve’s eye’s widened and he sat up. “I get it,” he said. “Now I see what you’re doing.” Turning to Reid, he added, “Did you put him up to this?”

  “What?” Reid asked.

  “You guys are trying to set up an insanity plea, aren’t you?”

  “Steve,” Father Thomas said sternly, “I know how all this sounds. Believe me, I wouldn’t be saying it if I hadn’t experienced it. You may think it’s crazy or I am, but I do not, and I will not plead insanity or anything else except not guilty, even if I face the chair.”

  “Sorry,” Steve said, though it hardly sounded sincere. “So she got free and ran down the path and you followed her. Then what?”

  “Before she ran from the cabin she flung me across the room, so I wasn’t right behind her. In fact, I never saw her again. Not really. When I ran out of the cabin, she was gone. And the truth is, I can’t run. I was barely walking fast.”

  “How’d you know to follow her down the path?” Steve asked. “Wasn’t it far more likely that she would run up to the chapel or to the dorms?”

  “I followed the blood.”

  “You followed the blood,” Steve said patronizingly.

  “It led me to the right, away from the lake and down toward the clearing. When I reached the edge of the clearing, I could hear her breathing, but I couldn’t see her. While I was looking around, I heard a rustling in the leaves behind me and I turned to see what it was. That’s when someone grabbed my head and bashed it into the tree.”

  “Someone?” Steve asked.

  “The person’s hand was covering my eyes where he grabbed my head,” Father Thomas said, “so I couldn’t see who it was. At the time I thought it was Tammy.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I don’t know,” he said. “Mr. Reid thinks it might not have been.”

  “Please enlighten us, Mr. Reid,” Steve said.

  “My client was unconscious when Ms. Taylor was murdered. Obviously, his first assumption was she was killed by whatever was inside her that had caused her to do all the things to herself she had already done—be it drugs, mental illness, or demons—and maybe it was. Honestly, we don’t know, and frankly, the burden’s not ours to prove, but we now also believe it’s just as likely that Tammy was murdered and that the person who did it is the same person who knocked Father Thomas out.”

  “So this discriminating murderer kills Tammy, but just knocks him out?” Steve said.

  “Maybe,” Reid said. “Maybe he or she couldn’t kill a priest or only wanted to kill Tammy or maybe they thought they had killed him. That was a powerful blow. Whatever the case, the implication is clear.”

  “Not to me,” Steve said. “So maybe you’ll be kind enough to break it down for me.”

  “Not only could my unconscious client not have killed Ms. Taylor,” he said, “but his very injury provides the possible evidence of the real murderer’s presence—be it the demon or disease that made Ms. Taylor strong enough to deliver the blow or an as yet unknown assailant. And in the likelihood that it’s the latter and it’s the same person who killed Tommy, I suggest you begin interviewing the other residents at St. Ann’s.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “It’s dismissive and dangerous to call the incarnation of all that’s evil mere mental illness,” Father Thomas said.

  I glanced over at him in the passenger seat, then into the rearview mirror at Ralph Reid in the back. Both men looked like I felt. Beyond tired. Bone-weary.

  I was driving us back to St. Ann’s in the seemingly sourceless soft light just before dawn, feeling fatigue in every stiff joint, every sore muscle.

  “Mental illness can’t do what was done last night,” he added.

  Breaking our long stretch of silence, Father Thomas seemed to be talking to no one in particular, but Ralph Reid responded.

  “You’re right, Father,” Reid said. “I’m sorry. I was just making it clear to them that we could offer more than one case for reasonable doubt.”

  “It’s the truth I’m concerned about. Not reasonable doubt.”

  “But we don’t know what the truth is, do we?”

  “I do.”

  We were riding along the coast, the Gulf to our left, pale in the low light, the horizon closer than usual, beyond which appeared to be nothingness. The scenic road was mostly empty, only the occasional serious fishermen easing by, their beer-loaded boats bouncing along behind their rusted pickups. No one else was out. What few tourists there were and the numerous snowbirds who had flocked here were fast asleep in their warm rented beds.

  “Well, the rest of us are trying to figure it out,” Reid said.

  “We weren’t there. And the truth is, neither were you when Tammy was killed.”

  “I was there,” he said, his voice flat, detached.

  “But unconscious.”

  “I know in my heart she was killed by what was possessing her.”

  “All I’m saying is it could’ve been someone who—”

  “No. No one at St. Ann’s could do something like that.”

  “Is that what you’re doing?” Reid asked. “Trying to protect the rest of us?”

  He shook his head, but didn’t say anything.

  Neither he nor Reid had looked at each other during their entire conversation. Father Thomas was looking out his window, though it was opposite the Gulf and offered only a dim view of beach cottages, and Ralph Reid, who had insisted on sitting on the small jump seat in the back, was talking to the center of the truck he was forced to face.

  “Someone could have come from the outside,” Reid said. “Not easily, but it’s at least a possibility.”

  “Without being seen? And at exactly the right moment?”

  “It’s possible,” Reid said.

  “The gate was locked.”

  “It was open when we left this morning,” I said.

  “Only because Brad had opened it for the police and ambulance earlier,” Father said.

  I wondered how, being unconscious at the time, he could know that, but decided not to pursue it at the moment.

  “The murderer could have walked in,” Reid said. “It’d be a good hike, but it could be done.”

  Father Thomas shook his head and let out a long sigh.

  Glancing at him again, I wondered if I was looking at the murderer. Could this kindly old man kill? It didn’t seem likely—at least in one sense. In another, it fit—acting out on repressed sexual frustration, fear of discovery, escalating violence, a final fatal blow he couldn’t take back.

  “Father, his job is just to think in terms of possible defenses,” I said. “Scenarios that will raise a reasonable doubt.”

  “If you’re going to continue to represent me,” he said to Reid, “know that I would rather go to jail than deny the truth or have the finger of suspicion pointed at innocent people.”

  “You’re going to represent him?” I said, looking into the rearview mirror.

  Reid nodded.

  Father Thomas said, “If he does what I tell him and doesn’t profane sacred things.”

  “You don’t think I should?” Reid asked me.

  “Are you a criminal attorney?”

  “I’ve done criminal work,” he said.

  “I’m not talking about your job with Gulf Paper.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Don’t you think Father needs someone who specializes in it?” I said. “Someone who’s not one of a very few possible suspects?”

  “Being a possible suspect isn’t going to keep you or Steve from investigating, but if Father wants another attorney, I’ll help him find one.”

  “I can’t afford another attorney.”

  “How can you afford him?”

  “Apparently I’m charity,” he said.

  “I�
�d never dream of charging Father a penny. He’s been as much a priest to me as anyone ever has. We’ve been friends for many years now.”

  “You could be called as a witness,” I said.

  “So could Steve,” he said.

  “Steve shouldn’t be working this case.”

  “But it’s okay for you?”

  “I’m not going to do much,” I said, “but no matter what I do, it’s not official.”

  “You really don’t think he should represent me, John?” Father asked.

  “I don’t. I think it’d be better for both of you if he didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Reid said, rushing to say what I was thinking before I did, “if I committed the murder, I won’t try very hard to keep you from being convicted for it.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Whatta you think really happened?” Kathryn asked.

  Before going to my room and attempting to fall asleep—something that probably wouldn’t be as difficult as it usually was—I wanted to have one more look at the crime scene in the light of day.

  I was standing at the edge of the clearing when she walked up behind me.

  “I have no idea,” I said, turning toward her. “But I have a really hard time believing the devil did it.”

  She looked out at the circle of trees in a kind of childlike wonderment.

  “‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy,’” she said.

  Her eyes were red, their lids heavy, purplish half-moon shapes beneath them. Otherwise her face had very little color.

  “Well, whether his father’s ghost was real or imagined,” I said, “it didn’t turn out too well for the Prince of Denmark, did it?”

  “No, it didn’t. Still, one must play the part one’s assigned.”

  The early morning sun had yet to climb above the treetops, but there was more than enough light to see the violent scene.

  “Pretty fatalistic,” I said.

  She shrugged, continuing to look around. “Still can’t believe she’s dead.”

  I nodded.

  She opened her mouth wide and yawned, slowly lifting her hand to cover it—a gesture that seemed an afterthought, a nod to a social nicety she really didn’t have the energy or the conviction for.